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Meta's Instagram will soon allow artists to create and sell their own NFTs both right on the social media platform and off it. Axios reports: IG's feature will roll out to a small group of select creators in the U.S. to start, according to Meta. The first creators tapped to test the feature include photographer Isaac âoeDriftâ Wright, known as DrifterShoots, and artist Amber Vittoria. Meta won't charge fees for posting or sharing an NFT on IG, though, app store fees still apply. Separately, there will be a "professional mode" for Facebook profiles for creators to build a social media presence separate from their personal one. Artist royalties appear to be a part of the plan. Minting or the creating of NFTs on IG will start on Polygon, a boon for the layer-2 blockchain (a separate blockchain built on top of Ethereum) given the potential onboarding of IG's billion active users. The price of Polygon's token MATIC jumped 17% from Wednesday evening to Thursday morning, boosted by IG news but also, because JPMorgan conducted its first live DeFi trade using that blockchain. The platform is adding support for Solana blockchain and Phantom wallet with the latest feature update, adding them to the list of already-supported wallets such as MetaMask, Coinbase Wallet, Dapper Wallet, Rainbow and Trust Wallet. Ethereum and Flow blockchains are already supported. Info for selected collections with OpenSea metadata, like collection name and description, will show up on IG.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The New York Police Department has joined Ring Neighbors, the neighborhood surveillance network built around Amazon's Ring security cameras. The Verge reports: The partnership, announced yesterday, means the NYPD will view people's posts on Neighbors and be able to post directly to it, including requests for public help on "active police matters." Neighbors is a Nextdoor-like extension of Ring's security camera business, allowing residents of a neighborhood to discuss crime and safety as well as post footage from their cameras. While many law enforcement departments have joined Neighbors in recent years, this marks its adoption by America's largest police force. (Police could separately request Ring footage for criminal investigations without the app.) It's part of an increasingly tight integration between Amazon and police -- one that's raised both concerns about privacy and questions about its crime-solving value.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reason Magazine: The Babylon Bee this week joined The Onion in urging the Supreme Court to defend the First Amendment against an Ohio law that makes parody a felony. The case, which the Institute for Justice is asking the Court to take up, involves Parma resident Anthony Novak, who in 2016 was prosecuted for violating a state law against using a computer to "disrupt, interrupt, or impair the functions of any police, fire, educational, commercial, or governmental operations." Novak supposedly did that by creating a parody of the Parma Police Department's Facebook page. [...] For obvious reasons, the right-leaning Bee, like the left-leaning Onion, is alarmed by the implication that people have no recourse against cops who arrest them for making fun of government agencies. "The Bee is serving a brutal life sentence in Twitter jail as we speak," says its amicus brief (PDF) in Novak v. City of Parma. "Its writers would very much like to avoid a consecutive sentence in a government-run facility." The premise of Novak's prosecution was that he had disrupted police operations by prompting calls about his parody to the department's nonemergency line. "Left in the hands of the Sixth Circuit and the Parma PD (and other like-minded law enforcement), the speech-stifling Ohio statute used to go after Mr. Novak empowers state officials to search, arrest, jail, and prosecute parodists without fear of ever being held accountable," the Bee says. "The upshot for The Bee is that, in Ohio at least, its writers could be jailed for many, if not most, of the articles The Bee publishes, provided that someone contacted law enforcement -- or another entity 'protected' by [Ohio's law] -- to tell them that the articles exist." Consider the March 3 Bee story headlined "Donut Sales Surge as Police Departments Re-Funded." If someone "had called the Parma Police Department to let them know that The Bee had published the article," the brief suggests, the publication "could have been charged with a felony, its offices searched, and its writers arrested and jailed for days, all without consequence for the parties doing the charging, arresting, jailing, and searching." Likewise if an officer's "passive-aggressive brother-in-law had forwarded the article" to the cop's official email address, thereby "interrupt[ing]" his work. Given the broad wording of Ohio's law, which refers to "governmental operations" generally, Bee articles about federal agencies, such as its August 12 report on the FBI's search of Mar-a-Lago, also could be treated as grounds for arrest. "Had a caller contacted the FBI field office in Cleveland or Cincinnati" to "express outrage over the suspicious timing of the FBI's raid on Melania Trump's Mar-a-Lago closet and Attorney General Garland's acquisition of a haute couture wardrobe," the Bee notes, that could be the basis for a felony charge in Ohio. On the First Amendment issues raised by this case, both The Onion and The Babylon Bee see eye to eye. "The Onion may be staffed by socialist wackos, but in their brief defending parody to this Court, they hit it out of the park," the Bee says. "Parody has a unique capacity to speak truth to power and to cut its subjects down to size. Its continued protection under the First Amendment is crucial to preserving the right of citizens to effectively criticize the government."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth said on Thursday it will make electric cars in the kingdom under a joint venture with Apple supplier Foxconn as part of a push to build new industries and lessen dependence on oil. Reuters reports: Ceer "is the first Saudi automotive brand to produce electric vehicles in Saudi Arabia, and will design, manufacture and sell a range of vehicles for consumers in Saudi Arabia and the MENA (Middle East and North Africa) region, including sedans and sports utility vehicles," PIF said in a statement. PIF said its cars would be available in 2025, adding Ceer would draw more than $150 million in foreign direct investment, create up to 30,000 direct and indirect jobs and is projected to contribute $8 billion to the kingdom's GDP by 2034. The joint venture "will license component technology from BMW for use in the vehicle development process," PIF said in a statement. "Foxconn will develop the electrical architecture of the vehicles, resulting in a portfolio of products that will lead in the areas of infotainment, connectivity and autonomous driving technologies," it added.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The macro story unfolding today is all the layoffs taking place in the tech industry. "Tech giants including Meta and Amazon have been slowing down their hiring for months, while smaller tech companies such as Robinhood and Coinbase have announced layoffs," reports the New York Times. "But rarely have so many job cuts and hiring freezes in the industry been disclosed on the same day." From the report: The technology industry's slowdown came into even sharper relief on Thursday as Amazon publicly said it had paused hiring for its corporate work force and several other technology companies announced job cuts. [...] At the same time, Lyft said it would cut 13 percent of its employees, or about 650 of its 5,000 workers. Stripe, a payment processing platform, said it would cut 14 percent of its employees, roughly 1,100 jobs. [...] Tech companies have led the way for the U.S. economy over the past decade, lifting the stock market during the worst days of the coronavirus pandemic. But in recent weeks, many of the largest firms reported financial results that suggested they were feeling the impact of global economic jitters, soaring inflation and rising interest rates. Social media companies in particular have been grappling with a pullback in digital advertising over the last few months. Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, said last week that its head count would remain "roughly flat" through the end of next year. The company plans to shrink some teams and hire only for high-priority areas. Snap, Snapchat's parent company, laid off 20 percent of its employees in August, blaming challenging macroeconomic conditions. Last week, Microsoft told investors that new hires in this quarter "should be minimal." Alphabet, which owns Google and YouTube, also said that in this quarter it would hire fewer than half the number of people it added in the third quarter. More layoffs at tech companies are in the works. Elon Musk, who bought Twitter for $44 billion last week, has ordered cuts across the company, which employs about 7,500 people. Workers at Twitter have started circulating a "Layoff Guide" with tips on how to handle being laid off. On Thursday, Lyft said it had decided on layoffs in the face of "a probable recession sometime in the next year." All teams will be affected, said Logan Green and John Zimmer, the company's founders, in an email to employees. Over the summer, Lyft cut 2 percent of its employees, mostly as a result of shutting down its car rental business, and froze hiring. But the company still has "to become leaner," its founders said. It is "not immune to the realities of inflation and a slowing economy," which have led to increasing ride-share insurance costs. Lyft also said it planned to sell its first-party vehicle service business and expected employees on that team to be offered jobs at the acquiring company.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: OpenAI, the San Francisco-based lab behind AI systems like GPT-3 and DALL-E 2, today launched a new program to provide early-stage AI startups with capital and access to OpenAI tech and resources. Called Converge, the cohort will be financed by the OpenAI Startup Fund, OpenAI says. The $100 million entrepreneurial tranche was announced last May and was backed by Microsoft and other partners. The 10 or so founders chosen for Converge will receive $1 million each and admission to five weeks of office hours, workshops and events with OpenAI staff, as well as early access to OpenAI models and "programming tailored to AI companies." The deadline to apply is November 25, but OpenAI notes that it'll continue to evaluate applications after that date for future cohorts. With Converge, OpenAI is no doubt looking to cash in on the increasingly lucrative industry that is AI. The Information reports that OpenAI -- which itself is reportedly in talks to raise cash from Microsoft at a nearly $20 billion valuation -- has agreed to lead financing of Descript, an AI-powered audio and video editing app, at a valuation of around $550 million. AI startup Cohere is said to be negotiating a $200 million round led by Google, while Stability AI, the company supporting the development of generative AI systems, including Stable Diffusion, recently raised $101 million. The size of the largest AI startup financing rounds doesn't necessarily correlate with revenue, given the enormous expenses (personnel, compute, etc.) involved in developing state-of-the-art AI systems. (Training Stable Diffusion alone cost around $600,000, according to Stability AI.) But the continued willingness of investors to cut these startups massive checks -- see Inflection AI's $225 million raise, Anthropic's $580 million in new funding and so on -- suggests that they have confidence in an eventual return on investment. "We're excited to meet groups across all phases of the seed stage, from pre-idea solo founders to co-founding teams already working on a product," OpenAI writes in a blog post. "Engineers, designers, researchers, and product builders ... from all backgrounds, disciplines, and experience levels are encouraged to apply, and prior experience working with AI systems is not required."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

It has been almost three years since Chromebook users got word that Steam support is coming to ChromeOS. We're still not totally there yet, but today Google announced that it's ready to enter beta testing. From a report: In a blog post, Zach Alcorn, Google product manager, announced that Steam on Chromebooks is available as a beta with ChromeOS 108.0.5359.24 and later. Steam on ChromeOS entered alpha in March, and Alcorn said the updates announced today are based on "thousands of gameplay reports." The Steam on ChromeOS alpha required not just an Intel CPU, but also an Intel 11th-gen Core i5 chip with Intel's Iris Xe graphics. The beta supports Intel's latest 12th-gen chips and extends support to Team Red. Alcorn said the beta supports AMD's Ryzen 5000 C-Series CPUs.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A new experiment has shown that zapping clouds with electrical charge can alter droplet sizes in fog or, potentially, help a constipated cloud to rain. From a report: Last year Giles Harrison, from the University of Reading, and colleagues from the University of Bath, spent many early mornings chasing fogs in the Somerset Levels, flying uncrewed aircraft into the gloop and releasing charge. Their findings, published in Geophysical Research Letters, showed that when either positive or negative charge was emitted, the fog formed more water droplets. The findings could be put to good use in dry regions of the world, such as the Middle East and north Africa, as a means of encouraging clouds to release their rain. Cloud droplets are larger than fog droplets and so more likely to collide, and Harrison and his colleagues believe that adding electrical charge to a cloud could help droplets to stick together and become more weighty.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Register: A number of job postings -- including this now-closed ad from late September for a principal software engineering manager -- are looking for engineers and others to become part of the "newly formed Windows Incubation team" whose mission is to "build a new direction for Windows in a cloud first world." The lofty goal is to "move Windows to a place that combines the benefits of the cloud and Microsoft 365 to offer more compute resources on demand and creates a hybrid app model that spans from on-premises to the cloud." According to the ad, it also includes "building a Web-based shell with direct integration with Windows 365." Included in the possible models are low-cost PCs available via subscriptions, with advertising helping to offset some of the costs. (Also mentioned in the job are direct-to-cloud devices.)Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Encrypted messaging app Signal will soon have an ephemeral "stories" feature, with video, pictures or text that disappear after 24 hours. From a report: Signal, often used by journalists, activists and privacy minded individuals, plans to roll out the feature on Monday, the nonprofit's president Meredith Whittaker told Axios at the Web Summit in Lisbon, Portugal Thursday. Signal has been beta-testing the feature since last month. User updates that last on profiles for 24 hours, often called "stories," are something popularized by Snapchat and Instagram, both companies with targeted advertising based business models who also monetize the feature, something Signal is vehemently opposed to. "The short answer is that people want [stories]," Whittaker told Axios in an exclusive interview when asked why the privacy-focused app is rolling out such a feature.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Ericsson subsidiary Vonage will pay $100 million to settle Federal Trade Commission allegations that it created a web of obstacles for its customers to cancel the internet-based telephone service and charged unexpected termination fees. From a report: The agreement, filed in a federal court Thursday, represents the largest settlement of its kind in the FTC's enforcement push against companies that allegedly throw up high hurdles to customers seeking to cancel subscriptions or services. New Jersey-based Vonage will be required to obtain consumers' express consent for services and simplify its cancelation process. The cost of a subscription ranged from $5 to $50 a month for consumers, and potentially thousands a month for businesses, the FTC said. The commission said it received hundreds of complaints from consumers about Vonage's tactics.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Amazon will freeze hiring in its corporate workforce as the e-commerce giant deals with an "unusual macro-economic environment," a company executive said on Thursday. From a report: "We anticipate keeping this pause in place for the next few months, and will continue to monitor what we're seeing in the economy and the business to adjust as we think makes sense," Beth Galetti, senior vice-president of People Experience and Technology at Amazon, said in a blog post. The company has already paused hiring in some of its businesses in recent weeks, but intends to hire a "meaningful" number of people next year, Galetti added.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Delhi's 20 million residents were effectively breathing smoke on Thursday as the air quality index (AQI) breached the "severe" and "hazardous" categories in nearly all monitoring stations of the Indian capital, raising calls to close schools. From a report: The AQI exceeded 450 at many places early in the day, according to data from the Central Pollution Control Board. A reading over 400 affects healthy people, with serious impacts on those with existing diseases, the federal government says. The index was over 800 in some pockets of the city, according to data from the Delhi Pollution Control Committee. "What is happening with air pollution in Delhi is nothing short of a crime against humanity!" author and socialite Suhel Seth wrote on Twitter. "There's a total collapse of accountability!" The world's most polluted capital is blanketed in smog every winter as cold, heavy air traps construction dust, vehicle emissions and smoke from the burning of crop stubble in the neighbouring states to clear the fields for the next crop.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

maxcelcat writes: Indigenous Australians living in remote areas have had a housing crisis for decades now. One community is addressing this by having houses created by Luyten, printed with concrete, built in their settlement. Traditional housing construction a long way from major urban centres is extraordinarily expensive and complicated. Maintenance is also a huge issue, many plumbers, electricians etc. in northern Australia find having their own aircraft is the only way to get around. Which of course adds to the costs. Hopefully this turns out to be a workable solution.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

As an added bonus, cleanup after rare earth extraction would be much easier. From a report: A variety of modern technologies, including permanent magnets that have been used in everything from earbuds to wind turbines, rely on rare earth elements. While the metals aren't actually especially rare, they don't occur at high concentrations in the Earth's crust. As such, extracting them is expensive and tends to produce a lot of environmental damage, meaning that most of the supply comes from a small number of countries (see the chart here), leaving the supply at risk of political fights. So the potential to get much more out of existing rare earth mines is obviously very appealing. And the method described in a paper released on Monday seems to offer it all: more metal per ore, much lower cost, and far less worry about mining waste. Many of the best rare earth deposits occur in places where nature has concentrated the elements for us. These tend to be sediments formed from materials where the rare earth elements will react or interact with the sediment, coming out of solution and gradually building up the concentration in the ore. The usual method of extracting the elements from these ores essentially involves reversing that process. An ion-rich solution is pumped through the ore, and these ions displace the rare earths, allowing them to leach out of the ore. Typically, the solution used is ammonium sulfate. The production of ammonium sulfate has its own energy and materials costs, and it leaves the material behind in the ore, which may require an environmental cleanup afterward. And the process isn't very selective; lots of other, cheaper metals, like aluminum and calcium, also come out of the ore and need to be separated from the desired products.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Geopolitics such as Russia's invasion of Ukraine has led to more damaging and widespread cybersecurity attacks in the year to July, EU cybersecurity agency ENISA said in its annual report on Thursday. From a report: ENISA's study follows concerns about the role of state actors and the growing range of threats to governments, companies and essential sectors such as energy, transport, banking and digital infrastructure. The agency said geopolitical situations - in particular the Russian invasion of Ukraine - were game-changers during the period under review. Zero-day exploits in which hackers exploit software vulnerabilities before developers have a chance to fix the flaws, as well as artificial intelligence-enabled disinformation and deepfakes resulted in more malicious and widespread attacks with more damaging impact, it said.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

When underwater cables congregate in one place, things get tricky. From a report: Look at Egypt on a map of the world's subsea Internet cables and it immediately becomes clear why Internet experts have been concerned about the area for years. The 16 cables in the area are concentrated through the Red Sea and touch land in Egypt, where they make a 100-mile journey across the country to reach the Mediterranean Sea. (Cable maps don't show the exact locations of cables.) It has been estimated that around 17 percent of the world's Internet traffic travels along these cables and passes through Egypt. Alan Mauldin, the research director of telecoms market research firm TeleGeography, says last year the region had 178 terabits of capacity, or 178,000,000Mbps -- the US has median home Internet speeds of 167Mbps. Egypt has become one of the Internet's most prominent chokepoints for a few reasons, says Doug Madory, director of Internet analysis at monitoring firm Kentik. Primarily, its geography contributes to the concentration of cables in the area. Passing through the Red Sea and across Egypt is the shortest (mostly) underwater route between Asia and Europe. While some intercontinental Internet cables travel across land, it is generally safer for them to be placed at the bottom of the sea where it is harder for them to be disrupted or snooped upon. Going through Egypt is one of the only practical routes available. To the south, cables that pass around Africa are longer; while to the north, only one cable (the Polar Express) travels above Russia. "Every time someone tries to draw up an alternative route, you end up going through Syria or Iraq or Iran or Afghanistan -- all these places have a lot of issues," Madory says. The JADI cable system that bypassed Egypt was shut down due to Syria's civil war, Madory says, and it has not been reactivated. In March this year, another cable avoiding Egypt was severed as a consequence of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Stripe, one of the world's most valuable startups, will cut more than 1,000 jobs as it seeks to rein in costs ahead of any economic downturn. From a report: The payments company will cut its workforce by 14% this week, returning headcount to the almost 7,000 total from February, co-founders Patrick and John Collison said in an email to staff seen by Bloomberg News. The two vowed to trim expenses more broadly as they prepare for "leaner times." "We were much too optimistic about the internet economy's near-term growth in 2022 and 2023 and underestimated both the likelihood and impact of a broader slowdown," the Collison brothers said in the email. "We grew operating costs too quickly. Buoyed by the success we're seeing in some of our new product areas, we allowed coordination costs to grow and operational inefficiencies to seep in." Stripe and its publicly traded rivals have seen valuations drop as the growth in online spending slowed in the aftermath of the pandemic, just as supply-chain disruptions and once-in-a-generation inflation also hurt activity. The company in July told staffers that an internal valuation for the company dropped to about $74 billion, compared to the $95 billion it received in its most recent fundraising.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Google is adding package tracking features to Gmail, which should make it easier to see where your orders are at a glance while you scroll through your emails. In a blog post on Wednesday, the company says you'll start seeing "a simple, helpful view of your package tracking and delivery information right in your inbox" in the next few weeks. Gmail will show you the delivery date on the list item for any shipping email, making it so you don't have to actually open the email and click a tracking link to figure out when you should expect the package. If you do go into the email, though, you'll see a card with more detailed info. At the moment, it seems as if the feature will be opt-in -- when it becomes available, you'll be able to turn it on from a notification that shows up in your inbox or through settings. Google says Gmail will also be able to notify you when a package has been delayed and bring the order email to the top of your inbox. That feature seems to be coming later, though, as the post says it'll roll out "in the coming months." Amazon products will not be compatible with the feature because their notification emails don't include tracking information. They also don't disclose what products have shipped. A Google spokesperson told The Verge that the feature will be available "for participating merchants" and that "if a tracking number is not included in the merchant's order email, the package tracking feature won't be available."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Nikolai Mushegian, an early developer of MakerDAO, the largest decentralized finance protocol, as well as a contributor to multiple crypto projects, was found dead on Friday in San Juan, Puerto Rico, according to local news outlet El Nuevo Dia. CoinDesk reports: According to the news article, a 29-year-old man identified as "Nicolai Arcadie Muchgian" was dragged by water currents close to Condado Beach. Beach patrols managed to retrieve his body from the ocean but there were no vital signs. The area is known for its dangerous strong oceancurrents that have caused several fatalities, according to the paper. (CoinDesk obtained a copy of a press release from the Puerto Rico Police Department consistent with the details reported by El Nuevo Dia.) Mushegian contributed to the development of multiple blockchain projects and was heralded as a prolific architect of blockchain-based decentralized financial platforms and stablecoin systems. Most notably, he was MakerDAO founder Rune Christensen's original technical partner on the project and worked on the protocol and its decentralized stablecoin DAI between 2015 and 2018, according to his personal website. He was not involved in the protocol's development lately, a MakerDAO contributor told CoinDesk. He also co-founded the automated market maker Balancer and Reflexer's RAI, which is an ether-backed stablecoin and a fork of DAI. Most recently, he was working on a crypto project called Rico, a free-floating decentralized stablecoin system that aimed to be the "spiritual successor of DAI" and designed in a way that DAI was originally intended "without compromises." "Nikolai was one of the only people in the early days of Ethereum and smart contracts who was able to predict the possibility of smart contract hacks and invented the security-oriented approach to smart contract design we know today," Christensen tweeted Monday. "Maker would have been toast without him." "Mushegian's cryptic last tweet posted only a few hours before his death prompted speculation in crypto circles about the circumstances of his death and mental health," adds CoinDesk.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

China's government-owned utility State Power Investment Corporation (SPIC) has launched the world's first commercial offshore floating solar that's paired with an offshore wind turbine. Electrek reports: SPIC is one of five major electrical utility companies in China, and the world's largest photovoltaic power generation enterprise. The pilot is located off the coast of Haiyang, a city in Shandong, eastern China. The project uses Norway-based Ocean Sun's patented floating solar power technology. The two solar floaters (see the photo above) have an installed capacity of 0.5 megawatts peak. They're connected to a transformer on a SPIC-owned wind turbine and then a subsea cable runs from the wind turbine to the power grid. If the pilot is successful, the plan is to build a 20 MW floating wind-solar farm in 2023 using Ocean Sun's technology.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: A senior NASA official said this week that SpaceX has done "very well" in working toward the development of a vehicle to land humans on the surface of the Moon, taking steps to address two of the space agency's biggest concerns. NASA selected SpaceX and Starship for its Human Landing System in April 2021. In some ways, this was the riskiest choice of NASA's options because Starship is a very large and technically advanced vehicle. However, because of the company's self-investment of billions of dollars into the project, SpaceX submitted the lowest bid, and from its previous work with SpaceX, NASA had confidence that the company would ultimately deliver. Two of NASA's biggest technological development concerns were the new Raptor rocket engine and the transfer and storage of liquid oxygen and methane propellant in orbit, said Mark Kirasich, NASA's deputy associate administrator who oversees the development of Artemis missions to the Moon. During a subcommittee meeting of NASA's Advisory Council on Monday, however, Kirasich said SpaceX has made substantial progress in both areas. The Raptor rocket engine is crucial to Starship's success. Thirty-three of these Raptor 2 engines power the Super Heavy booster that serves as the vehicle's first stage, and six more are used by the Starship upper stage. For a successful lunar mission, these engines will need to re-light successfully on the surface of the Moon to carry astronauts back to orbit inside Starship. If the engines fail, the astronauts will probably die. "SpaceX has moved very quickly on development," Kirasich said about Raptor. "We've seen them manufacture what was called Raptor 1.0. They have since upgraded to Raptor 2.0 that first of all increases performance and thrust and secondly reduces the amount of parts, reducing the amount of time to manufacture and test. They build these things very fast. Their goal was seven engines a week, and they hit that about a quarter ago. So they are now building seven engines a week."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Godot Engine now has its own foundation to continue funding themselves. Previously, they teamed up with the Software Freedom Conservancy to handle fiscal sponsorship duties. Phoronix reports: The Godot engine developers and Software Freedom Conservancy mutually agreed to move the open-source game engine project to its own foundation. The Godot Foundation has been setup in the Netherlands as its own organization modeled after the policies of the SFC. The Godot Foundation is to help this game engine achieve its next level of growth and project a stronger image for the project. "We have just started the process of moving to the Foundation," writes Godot Engine lead developer, Juan Linietsky, in a blog post. "For now all of Godot's funding and contractors are still managed by the SFC. The SFC will gradually reduce its work for Godot and the new foundation will slowly ramp up. Stay tuned for announcements in the future as we finalize the Foundation's organizational structure and officially begin operations." More details can be found via the Godot Engine blog.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Google's text-to-image AI system, Imagen, is being added to the company's AI Test Kitchen app as a way to collect early feedback on the technology. The Verge reports: AI Test Kitchen was launched earlier this year as a way for Google to beta test various AI systems. Currently, the app offers a few different ways to interact with Google's text model LaMDA (yes, the same one that the engineer thought was sentient), and the company will soon be adding similarly constrained Imagen requests as part of what it calls a "season two" update to the app. In short, there'll be two ways to interact with Imagen, which Google demoed to The Verge ahead of the announcement today: "City Dreamer" and "Wobble." In City Dreamer, users can ask the model to generate elements from a city designed around a theme of their choice -- say, pumpkins, denim, or the color blerg. Imagen creates sample buildings and plots (a town square, an apartment block, an airport, and so on), with all the designs appearing as isometric models similar to what you'd see in SimCity. In Wobble, you create a little monster. You can choose what it's made out of (clay, felt, marzipan, rubber) and then dress it in the clothing of your choice. The model generates your monster, gives it a name, and then you can sort of poke and prod the thing to make it "dance." Again, the model's output is constrained to a very specific aesthetic, which, to my mind, looks like a cross between Pixar's designs for Monsters, Inc. and the character creator feature in Spore. (Someone on the AI team must be a Will Wright fan.) These interactions are extremely constrained compared to other text-to-image models, and users can't just request anything they'd like. That's intentional on Google's part, though. As Josh Woodward, senior director of product management at Google, explained to The Verge, the whole point of AI Test Kitchen is to a) get feedback from the public on these AI systems and b) find out more about how people will break them. Google wouldn't share any data on how many people are actually using AI Test Kitchen ("We didn't set out to make this a billion user Google app," says Woodward) but says the feedback it's getting is invaluable. "Engagement is way above our expectations," says Woodward. "It's a very active, opinionated group of users." He notes the app has been useful in reaching "certain types of folks -- researchers, policymakers" who can use it to better understand the limitations and capabilities of state-of-the-art AI models. Still, the big question is whether Google will want to push these models to a wider public and, if so, what form will that take? Already, the company's rivals, OpenAI and Stability AI, are rushing to commercialize text-to-image models. Will Google ever feel its systems are safe enough to take out of the AI Test Kitchen and serve up to its users?Read more of this story at Slashdot.

PlayStation VR2 will officially be released on February 22, 2023, for $549.99, and pre-orders will begin on November 15. IGN reports: As revealed by the PlayStation.Blog, PlayStation VR2 will include the PS VR2 headset, PS VR2 Sense controllers, and stereo headphones. There will also be a PlayStation VR2 Horizon Call of the Mountain bundle that will retail for $599.99, and it will include everything from the standard edition plus a PlayStation Store voucher code for Horizon Call of the Mountain. Also launching on February 22 will be the PlayStation VR2 Sense controller charging station, which allows players to charge their controllers "through a simple click-in design, without having to connect to a PS5 console -- freeing up the console's USB ports." Sony also revealed 11 new titles headed to PS VR2 in 2023, and they include The Dark Pictures: Switchback VR, Crossfire: Sierra Squad, The Light Brigade, Cities VR - Enhanced Edition, Cosmonious High, Hello Neighbor: Search and Rescue, Jurassic World Aftermath Collection, Pistol Whip VR, Zenith: The Last City, After the Fall, and Tentacular. While we don't have a full launch line-up quite yet, Sony did confirm that it is "expecting more than 20 titles" on February 22. You can preorder the system on November 15. Those interested can register today to get ready.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Wall Street Journal: Starting next year, executive M.B.A. students at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania can earn the $223,500 degree from their living rooms. After years of resistance, some of the country's top business schools are starting virtual M.B.A. programs that require only a few days of in-person instruction. Wharton and Georgetown University's McDonough School of Business said they would include options for executive and part-time M.B.A. students to take most coursework online in 2023. This fall, part-time M.B.A. students at New York University's Stern School of Business and the University of California, Berkeley's Haas School of Business were given an online option for most of their classes. All of the programs will charge online students the same tuition as those who attend in person, and those online students will get the same degree and credential as on-campus counterparts. The move to give students flexible location options comes as demand for two-year, full-time traditional M.B.A. programs has been dropping amid a competitive job market and growing concern about the cost of college. Between 2009 and 2020 the number of online M.B.A.s at accredited business schools in the U.S.more than doubled, and schools added more fully online M.B.A. degrees over the past two years during the pandemic, according to the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business. Recent announcements by Wharton and others mark a turning point for adoption of the degrees even at highly ranked campuses, school leaders say. For decades, part of the M.B.A.'s allure has been the face-to-face networking.But over the past two years, fully online M.B.A. programs in the U.S. enrolled more students than fully in-person programs, according to the association's survey of more than 150 business schools. A McDonough official said that part-time M.B.A. students tend to be less interested in the networking aspect of school.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"More than 70,000 users joined Mastodon on the day after Musk's Twitter takeover announcement," writes Slashdot reader votsalo. "Mastodon is a six-year-old decentralized social media platform that uses 'federated' servers." The Guardian's Wilfred Chan writes: I joined Mastodon this week, and it took a few hours just to master its new vocabulary. Some of it is a little silly-sounding: instead of tweets, you have "toots". Things get trickier after that. Mastodon is not a single website but a network of thousands of websites called "instances", also called servers. These servers are "federated", which means they are run by different entities but can still communicate with each other without needing to go through a central system. And the space they all exist in is called the "fediverse," which some savvy tooters call "the Fedi." When you sign up for Mastodon, the first thing you do is choose a server. There are general-purpose ones, such as mastodon.social, as well as ones aimed at interest groups, such as kpop.social or linuxrocks.online. There are also joke servers like dolphin.town, where the only thing users are allowed to post is the letter "e". The server becomes part of your username (for example, wilfred@kpop.social), and the toots you see on your feed are toots from your server-mates, rather than from the entire fediverse. But you're also free to toot at people from other servers and even "boost" their public toots on to your feed. That's how Mastodon creates a unified global experience without being controlled by one entity, said Eugen Rochko, Mastodon's Germany-based founder and lead developer. "The servers are service providers, like Hotmail and Gmail are for email. It doesn't mean that the different servers are isolated from each other, like old school forums," he said. "Having just one account allows you to follow and interact with anyone in this global decentralized social network." But Mastodon's model comes with its own risks. If the server you join disappears, you could lose everything, just like if your email provider shut down. A Mastodon server admin also has ultimate control over everything you do: if for some reason the owner of kpop.social doesn't like that I boosted a toot from dolphin.town, they could remove it or even "defederate" the server, which would block all dolphin toots from the k-pop server completely. A server admin could also snoop on my private toots if they wanted to -- or delete my account for any reason. While Mastadon's 70,000 jump in users sounds impressive, it's "still a drop in a bucket compared with Twitter's reported 450 million daily active users," says Chan. The decentralized software also remains difficult for many people to use. According to TechCrunch, Mastadon says it has "gained 123,562 new users as of October 27, 2022 and now has 528,607 active users on the network as of October 31, 2022."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

joshuark shares a report from BleepingComputer, written by Ax Sharma: Searching for 'GIMP' on Google as recently as last week would show visitors an ad for 'GIMP.org,' the official website of the well known graphics editor, GNU Image Manipulation Program. This ad would appear to be legitimate as it'd state 'GIMP.org' as the destination domain. But clicking on it drove visitors to a lookalike phishing website that provided them with a 700 MB executable disguised as GIMP which, in reality, was malware. Reddit user ZachIngram04 earlier shared the development stating that the ad previously took users to a Dropbox URL to serve malware, but was soon "replaced with an even more malicious one" which employed a fake replica website 'gilimp.org' to serve malware. BleepingCompuer observed another domain 'gimp.monster' related to this campaign. To pass off the trojanized executable as GIMP in a believable manner to the user, the threat actor artificially inflated the malware, that is otherwise under 5 MB in size, to 700 MB by a simple technique known as binary padding. It still isn't clear if this instance was a slip up caused by a potential bug in Google Ad Manager that allowed malvertising.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: Two of the largest meat companies in the U.S. have invested in a smartwatch app that allows managers to track and monitor worker's movements. According to a report by Investigate Midwest, a non-profit newsroom covering the agri-business industry, JBS and Tyson Foods have backed Mentore, a start-up that claims it uses surveillance data and AI to improve worker productivity and reduce workplace injuries. Once paired with a compatible smartwatch, Mentore's application uses sensors to collect data on the force, rotation, speed, and directional movement of a worker's arm as they repeatedly complete the same task. The company's algorithm then analyzes that data to determine if those movements are safe and alerts the individual if they are found to be using too much speed or force. According to the report and Mentore's co-founder, Apoorva Kiran, the watch can also detect dehydration. This raw watch data is then converted to real-time metrics that are made visible to supervisors on a dashboard. At the moment, it seems that Mentore plans to combat uncertainty and issues about transparency about the app by allowing workers to access their current and historical "injury risk" scores, but it's unclear whether they can do anything to challenge the real-time metrics on the watch itself. The app can also differentiate between "intense active motion" and "mild active motion." According to Mentore's site, this kind of data can "improve productivity, turnover, and safety at scale in real-time." [...] According to Investigate Midwest, the system has already been installed on about 10,000 devices across five industries in four different countries, including the U.S, Canada, Chile, and Japan. The move mirrors similar controversial tracking practices that many other companies, including Amazon, have tried to implement over the years in a bid to increase worker productivity. "Besides the tracking and the invasion of somebody's privacy, there is this real safety and health issue," Mark Lauritsen, an international vice president of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union (UFCW) and head of the union's meatpacking division, told Motherboard. He says that requiring workers to wear a watch or any other jewelry would be in violation of health and safety policies, opening them up to workplace injury and potentially leading to contamination of the product. "We're not going to allow their need to have more money and more productivity endanger people's lives and limbs just so they can make an extra dollar," Lauritsen said. "It's just not gonna happen."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Hawaii is implementing one of the most ambitious electronic waste recycling plans in the country, but some Hawaii retailers are afraid it will mean higher prices and less selection. From a report: Ironically, Hawaii has no ability to recycle electronic devices. Instead, the material has to be collected and shipped to processing centers elsewhere. The goal of the new law is to have manufacturers collect and ship out more and more of the used-up products. But industry lobbyist Walter Alcorn, with the Consumer Technology Association, said the law sets goals that cannot be met. "On the industry side, it's been a scramble." Alcorn said. "Particularly for the computer and printer manufacturers that previously did not have to have this type of a program." State Rep. Nicole Lowen, chair of the Energy and Environmental Protection Committee, was among the lead advocates for the law. She said putting the full responsibility on the manufacturers will incentivize them to pay more attention to the waste their industry is generating. "We are pushing them to rethink the design packaging, distribution systems of their products and create more efficiency, for the reuse and recycling of those products or the materials that they contain," Lowen said. The law required 49 manufacturers, from Apple to Samsung, to report how much product has been shipped in by weight and how they would set up systems to collect discarded devices and ship them to recycling locations. There are none in Hawaii so all the products would have to be shipped out.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Remember that time Google showed off its artificial intelligence prowess by demoing conversations with Pluto and a paper airplane? That was powered by LaMDA, one of Google's latest-generation conversational AI models. Now, Google's using LaMDA to build Wordcraft, a prototype writing tool that can help creative writers craft new stories. AI-powered writing tools aren't new. Chances are you've heard of Grammarly or copywriting tools like Jasper. What makes Wordcraft a bit different is that it's framed as a means to help create fictional work. Google describes it as a sort of "text editor with purpose" built into a web-based word processor. Users can prompt Wordcraft to rewrite phrases or direct it to make a sentence funnier. It can also describe objects if asked or generate prompts. In a nutshell, it's sort of like wrapping an editor and writing partner into a single AI tool. To test Wordcraft, Google created a workshop with 13 professional writers to see how well the prototype worked. While the writers seemed to appreciate Wordcraft as a way to spark new ideas, they unanimously agreed the tool wasn't going to replace authors anytime soon. For starters, the tool wasn't great at sticking to a narrative style and produced average or cliched writing. It also stuck to tried-and-true tropes while also steering clear of "mean" characters. "One clear finding was that using LaMDA to write full stories is a dead end. It's a much more effective tool when it's used to add spice," Douglas Eck, senior research director at Google Research, said at the AI@ event. Obviously, any prototype has kinks to work out. It's also hard to fully grasp what using an AI-powered creative writing tool is like. So I was curious to see a demo of it firsthand at Google's AI@ event.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

T-Mobile may be joining rivals Verizon and AT&T by introducing an $35 charge for all new postpaid activations and upgrades, according to The T-Mo Report and some Redditors. Engadget: According to T-Mobile internal documents, it's introducing a "Device Connection Charge" for "all activations and upgrades for mobile, Beyond the Smartphone and broadband devices." Before, the Uncarrier charged activation fees only if you received in-store customer support for new activations, with online orders exempt. Now, all new postpaid activations are charged, whether or not you were assisted. This includes updating to a new device, adding a Bring-Your-Own-Device line, or ordering a Home Internet line, according to The T-Mo Report. T-Mobile has always tried to separate itself from regular telecoms, but charging customers for essentially nothing doesn't sound very Uncarrier-like, if the reports are accurate. And you can't take your business to Sprint, as it no longer exists thanks to its merger with T-Mobile. When that deal was finalized, T-Mobile said things would be "better for customers," but constant activation charges would definitely not be better.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The U.S. is urging allies including Japan to follow its lead on restricting exports of advanced semiconductors and related technology to China, likely intensifying the impact of Chinese-American tensions on chipmakers worldwide. From a report: Tokyo has begun internal discussions on the issue at Washington's request, a Japanese government insider said. Officials are weighing which restrictions can be adopted in Japan, and will watch how other U.S. allies such as the European Union and South Korea respond. The sweeping export controls announced Oct. 7 by the U.S. Commerce Department span chipmaking equipment, design software and even engineers who support semiconductor manufacturing in China. "We were talking to our allies. No one was surprised when we did this, and they all know that we're expecting them to cover likewise," Alan Estevez, undersecretary of commerce for industry and security, said during an event Thursday hosted by a U.S. think tank. The curbs allow companies to apply for exemptions, but with a presumption of denial, meaning such requests are unlikely to be granted. Violators may face civil and criminal penalties.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Much of the Windows world has yet to adopt Microsoft's latest desktop operating system more than a year after it launched, according to figures for October collated by Statcounter. From a report: Just 15.44 percent of PCs across the globe have installed Windows 11, meaning it gained 1.83 percentage points in a month. This compares to the 71.29 percent running Windows 10, which fell marginally from 71.88 percent in September. Windows 7 is still hanging on with a tenuous grip, in third place with 9.61 percent, Windows 8.1 in fourth with 2.45 percent, plain old Windows 8 with 0.69 percent, and bless its heart, Windows XP with 0.39 percent because of your extended family. In total, Windows has almost 76 percent of the global desktop OS market followed by OS X with 15.7 percent and Linux with 2.6 percent. Android comprised 42.37 percent of total operating system market share, with Windows trailing on 30.11 percent, iOS on 17.6 percent, OS X on 6.24 percent, and Linux on 1.04 percent.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

States are shoring up expertise in high-speed internet networks by creating or expanding broadband offices to prepare for an influx of infrastructure cash. Ensuring that more than $40 billion in new funding connects every American to high-speed internet service is a job that's falling to the states -- and they need help. From a report: Of all the job openings posted for states' burgeoning broadband offices, the "director" position is the most common vacancy, according to data The Pew Charitable Trusts shared with Axios. Directors are often responsible for crafting state broadband plans and overseeing hundreds of millions in funding from multiple state and federal programs. The Pew tracker found 15 director-level positions posted, out of about 68 total positions since September 2021. Washington, Colorado, and Maine had the most job postings. The Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment Program (BEAD), funded by the bipartisan infrastructure law, will provide $42.45 billion to expand high-speed internet access by funding planning, infrastructure deployment and adoption programs in all 50 states, D.C., Puerto Rico and U.S. territories.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

TikTok is spelling out to its European users of the platform that their data can be accessed by employees outside the continent, including in China, amid political and regulatory concerns about Chinese access to user information on the site. From a report: The Chinese-owned social video app is updating its privacy policy to confirm that staff in countries, including China, are allowed to access user data to ensure their experience of the platform is "consistent, enjoyable and safe." The other countries where European user data could be accessed by TikTok staff include Brazil, Canada and Israel as well as the US and Singapore, where European user data is stored currently. [...] Data could be used to conduct checks on aspects of the platform, including the performance of its algorithms, which recommend content to users, and detect vexatious automated accounts. TikTok has previously acknowledged that some user data is accessed by employees of the company's parent, ByteDance, in China.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Faraday Future burned through cash and board seats while its founder fought for control. From a report: The image arrived in Susan Swenson's inbox on a Wednesday evening. Her corporate headshot had been crudely crossed out in digital red ink, and the word "Kill" was written in the bottom left corner. In the hours that followed, some of her colleagues received similar threats, including messages that referenced the recent assassination of former Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe. The menacing emails marked the apex of a months-long fight for control over Faraday Future Intelligent Electric, a Los Angeles, California-based publicly traded electric vehicle startup that once billed itself as the next Tesla. In September, after the death threats, persistent pressure from Faraday's largest shareholders, and a surprising cameo from property giant China Evergrande, Swenson, the executive chair, and three others agreed to leave Faraday's board of directors in a sweeping restructuring. While it's not known who sent the death threats -- the company has referred them to the FBI -- some leaders inside Faraday believe they were inspired by the boardroom fight recently waged by its largest shareholders, including a group that is partially managed by the startup's founder, exiled Chinese tycoon Jia Yueting. Seven months ago, Faraday's board sidelined Jia, who goes by YT, following an internal probe that examined his influence over day-to-day operations, as well as a series of loans employees made to the startup over the years. Now, he stands to benefit greatly from the impending board shakeup, which will be completed when Faraday holds its delayed annual meeting. He has been named an adviser to the board, and FF Global will have input on all six new members. As Faraday put it in a recent SEC filing, "YT Jia and FF Global have strengthened their already significant influence over the Company." But as YT reclaims power, it is over a company that's under investigation by the US Securities and Exchange Commission in relation to the findings of the internal probe -- information the Department of Justice has inquired about, too, according to Faraday. The startup also needs money, fast. After burning through more than $3 billion since it launched eight years ago, Faraday reported just $27 million in cash on Oct. 25th, and says it needs millions more if it hopes to finally ship its elusive SUV.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A federal judge has blocked Penguin Random House's proposed purchase of Simon & Schuster, agreeing with the Justice Department that the joining of two of the world's biggest publishers could "lessen competition" for "top-selling books." From a report: The ruling reinforced the Biden administration's tougher approach to proposed mergers, a break from decades of precedent under Democratic and Republican presidents. U.S. District Court Judge Florence Y. Pan announced the decision in a brief statement Monday, adding that much of her ruling remained under seal at the moment because of "confidential information" and "highly confidential information." She asked the two sides to meet with her Friday and suggest redactions. Penguin Random House quickly condemned the ruling, which it called "an unfortunate setback for readers and authors." In its statement Monday, the publisher said it would immediately seek an expedited appeal.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Eric Schmidt wants to reshape Washington's industrial policy to combat an intensifying US-China tech rivalry. The former Google chief executive officer's philanthropic arm issued recommendations aimed at encouraging US politicians to counter China's rising technological ambitions by ramping up regulatory scrutiny, encouraging more private investment and offering tax credits to train workers. From a report: China surprised the US on key "battleground" technologies -- including wireless 5G, microelectronics and AI -- as the Asian nation's industrial policy enabled it to dominate markets for drones, high-capacity batteries, critical minerals, solar panels, turbines and shipbuilding, the Schmidt-backed Special Competitive Studies Project said Tuesday in a report. "The US has some immense economic advantages, but there are some warning lights flashing," Liza Tobin, the project's senior director and a former China director for the US National Security Council, said on a call with reporters. "The US needs an America-style industrial strategy that leverages competition in our dynamic private sector and has carefully targeted incentives in sectors where we need to lead." The report calls on the US government to boost microelectronic production with the help of a large fund to unlock private capital, create an open-source security center to assist investments in digital infrastructure, establish a national security commission on digital finance and give regulators more power to screen investment flows to China that could threaten US national security.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Microsoft President Brad Smith is calling for companies, schools and governments to dramatically increase training workers for new and redesigned roles tackling the climate crisis. From a report: The software giant, which has pledged to remove more carbon than it emits by 2030, says the lack of skills in areas like carbon accounting, green procurement and supply chain management is a threat to the kind of progress needed to arrest global warming. The company, along with the Boston Consulting Group, studied 15 companies they said were leading the pack in sustainability innovation to produce a report on what's needed. Microsoft plans to develop and share more training resources through its LinkedIn business, work with United Nations and International Monetary Fund groups and NGOs, as well as convening a conference of corporate chief sustainability officers to share best practices. As you see it, what is the challenge? Brad Smith: Roughly 3,900 companies around the world have signed up for climate pledges. But what we're finding as a leading technology provider to these companies, is that we all now need to figure out how to turn these pledges into progress. That's easier said than done. It takes a real revolution in different business processes and in the use of digital technology as core components. But foundationally, it all relies on building a more skilled workforce. How do we we know we have a shortfall in these types of skills? LinkedIn did a study a year ago -- what it showed was that the number of jobs in the economy that require sustainability skills is growing by 8% a year but the number of people in the workforce that have these skills is growing by only 6% a year. So we're seeing a gap, and in fact, we're seeing a widening of this gap. When we entered the digital era, we needed to bring computer science into schools and we needed to bring digital fluency into the workplace. When we've reviewed the data, employers around the world really invested more in employee training between 1980 and 2000. Computers entered the workforce -- people needed to be trained how to use them. But we saw employer investments in employee training really declining after the year 2000 and have been stagnating ever since. We're going to need to reinvest in employee training.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

CVS and Walgreens have agreed to pay more than $10 billion in a landmark settlement to resolve opioid-crisis lawsuits brought by states, cities and other governments. From a report: The two largest U.S. drugstore chains said they reached a framework to settle the collection of lawsuits brought by governments and Native American tribes blaming pharmacies for helping fuel the nation's opioid epidemic. Under the proposed deal, CVS would pay $4.9 billion to states and municipalities and $130 million to tribes over the next 10 years starting in 2023. The company said the agreement isn't an admission of guilt and that it would continue to defend against any litigation that the settlement doesn't resolve. Walgreens said it has offered to pay up to $4.79 billion to states over 15 years and about $155 million to tribes. It also expects to pay up to $753.5 million in attorneys fees over six years. The company said the settlement wasn't an admission of wrongdoing. Each state, local government and tribe still must decide whether to participate in the settlement. Plaintiffs' attorneys appointed to lead the negotiations said they encouraged governments and tribes to join the settlement, which they said holds the pharmacies accountable. CVS Chief Executive Karen Lynch, on a call with analysts, said the settlement is in the "best interests of all parties and helps put a decades-old issue behind us." CVS has been in a separate legal battle with its insurers over whether they should cover some of the liability the company faces for the opioid lawsuits.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from 9to5Google: Google is preparing to shut down the dedicated Street View app on Android, keeping the feature in Google Maps. Google's Street View is an easy way to get a 360-degree look at almost any given street on the planet, perfect for getting a sense of your next travel destination or simply exploring the world from the comfort of home. While the Google Maps app has long offered an easy way to hop into Street View, there has also been a dedicated Street View app on Android and iOS. This standalone app served two distinct groups of people -- those who wanted to deeply browse Street View and those who wanted to contribute their own 360 imagery. Considering the more popular Google Maps app has Street View support and Google offers a "Street View Studio" web app for contributors, it should be no surprise to learn that the company is now preparing to shut down the Street View app. In the latest update, version 2.0.0.484371618, Google has prepared a handful of deprecation/shutdown notices for the Street View app. These notices are not yet visible in the app today, but our team managed to enable them. In the notice, Google confirms that the Street View app is set to shut down on March 31, 2023, encouraging users to switch to either Google Maps or Street View Studio. However, one feature that is being fully shut down with the Street View app's demise is that of "Photo Paths." First launched last year, Photo Paths were intended as a way to let nearly anyone with a smartphone contribute simple 2D photos of a road or path that had not yet been documented by Street View. Unlike every other feature of the Street View app, there is no replacement for Photo Paths on the web app or Google Maps app.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Chinese Navy could finally use lithium technology to replace the lead-acid batteries that are now used in its fleet of conventional submarines. Interesting Engineering reports: Since lithium batteries had a higher risk of catching fire or exploding, the navy was hesitant to replace the submarine fleet's current batteries with them. But, "after solving these problems, the replacement of lead-acid batteries with lithium batteries in conventional submarines is just around the corner," said Wang Feng, study lead and a submarine designer. The study claims that technical answers have been discovered through significant testing and development in China's electric car sector, and lithium batteries have been demonstrated to operate safely under difficult circumstances. The modifications could considerably improve a submarine's capacity for survival and battle, according to research that was released on October 15 in the peer-reviewed Chinese journal Marine Electric and Electronic Engineering. For more than a decade, the Chinese military has planned to replace the lead-acid batteries in its fleet of conventional submarines with lithium technology. The lead-acid batteries on these submarines, which have not seen significant development since World War II, have proved problematic due to their poor energy storage capacity, delayed charging, limited power output, short lifespan, and harmful gas leaks, according to the paper. Nickel and cobalt, which are added to batteries to increase performance, were a contributing factor to mishaps; however, some Chinese battery manufacturers have begun using iron and phosphate in their place recently.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Black holes have properties characteristic of quantum particles, a new study reveals, suggesting that the puzzling cosmic objects can be at the same time small and big, heavy and light, or dead and alive, just like the legendary Schrodinger's cat. Space.com reports: The new study, based on computer modeling, aimed to find the elusive connection between the mind-boggling time-warping physics of supermassive objects such as black holes and the principles guiding the behavior of the tiniest subatomic particles. The study team developed a mathematical framework that placed a simulated quantum particle just outside a giant simulated black hole. The simulation revealed that the black hole showed signs of quantum superposition, the ability to exist in multiple states at once -- in this case, to be at the same time both massive and not massive at all. The best known example of quantum superposition is the legendary SchrÃdinger's cat, a thought experiment designed by early 20th century physicist Erwin Schrodinger to demonstrate some of the key issues with quantum physics. According to quantum theories, subatomic particles exist in multiple states simultaneously until they interact with the external world. This interaction, which could be the simple act of being measured or observed, throws the particle into one of the possible states. Schrodinger, who won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1933, intended the experiment to demonstrate the absurdity of quantum theory, as it would suggest that a cat locked in a box can be at the same time dead and alive based on the random behavior of atoms, until an observer breaks the superposition. However, as it turned out, while a cat in a box could be dead regardless of the observer's actions, a quantum particle may indeed exist in a double state. And the new study indicates that a black hole does as well. The new study was published online in the journal Physical Review Letters on Friday.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Darin Fisher has built a lot of web browsers. A lot of web browsers. He was a software engineer at Netscape early in his career, working on Navigator and then helping turn that app into Firefox with Mozilla. Then, he went to Google and spent 16 years building Chrome and ChromeOS into massively successful products. Last year, he left Google for Neeva, where he worked on ways to build a browser around the startup's search engine. And now, he's leaving Neeva to join The Browser Company and work on Arc, one of the hottest new browsers on the market. Arc, which has been in an invite-only beta for more than a year, is trying to rethink the whole browser UI. It has a sidebar instead of a row of tabs, offers a lot of personalization options, and is meant for people who live their computing life in a browser (which is increasingly most people). CEO Josh Miller often talks about building "the internet computer," too, and using the browser as a way to make the internet more useful. Fisher has been an advisor to The Browser Company for a while, but Monday is his first official day at the company as a software engineer. Ahead of his new gig, Fisher and I got on a call to talk about why he thinks browsers are due for a reinvention -- and why he thinks a startup is the best place to do it. The answer starts with the browser's defining feature: tabs. Fisher doesn't hate tabs -- in fact, he helped popularize them. But he hates that using a modern browser involves opening a million of them, not being able to find them again, and eventually just giving up and starting all over again. "I remember when tabbed browsing was novel," Fisher says, "and helped people feel less cluttered because you don't have as many windows." But now, "even when I use Chrome," Fisher says, "I get a bunch of clutter. At some point, I just say, 'Forget it, I'm not even going to bother trying to sort through all these tabs. If it's important, I'll open it again.'" Browsers need better systems for helping you manage tabs, not just open more of them. The best way to improve the browser, Fisher ultimately decided, is to just start from scratch. Arc is full of new ideas about how web browsers can work: it combines bookmarks and tabs into one app switcher-like concept; it makes it easy to search among your open tabs; it has built-in tools for taking notes and making shareable mini websites. The experience can be jarring because it's so different, but Fisher says that's part of what he's excited about. "This is not stuff people haven't talked about before," he says, "but actually putting it together and focusing on it and thinking about the small steps that go a long way, I think that's where there's so much opportunity." Fisher likes to compare a browser to an operating system, which matches with The Browser Company's idea that Arc isn't just a browser but rather an iOS-like system for the open web. "It has task management UI, it has UI for creating and starting a journey, but there's so much more in between," he says. What the iPhone did for native apps, Arc hopes to do for web apps. Fisher says he's interested in improving the way files move around the internet, for instance, finding a better way than the constant downloading and uploading we all do all day. He likes that Arc has a picture-in-picture mode that works by default, pulling your YouTube video out when you switch tabs. All these make the web feel more connected and cohesive rather than just a bunch of tabs in a horizontal line. The Browser Company also plans to reinvent the internet browser for mobile, too. On mobile, in particular, he says, "there are so many opportunities because the starting point is so archaic." "He's vague on the details of his plans -- and The Browser Company hasn't really started working on a mobile browser yet anyway -- but says that's a big focus for him going forward," adds The Verge.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Last week, Meta announced an AI-powered audio compression method called "EnCodec" that can reportedly compress audio 10 times smaller than the MP3 format at 64kbps with no loss in quality. Meta says this technique could dramatically improve the sound quality of speech on low-bandwidth connections, such as phone calls in areas with spotty service. The technique also works for music. Ars Technica reports: Meta debuted the technology on October 25 in a paper titled "High Fidelity Neural Audio Compression," authored by Meta AI researchers Alexandre Defossez, Jade Copet, Gabriel Synnaeve, and Yossi Adi. Meta also summarized the research on its blog devoted to EnCodec. Meta describes its method as a three-part system trained to compress audio to a desired target size. First, the encoder transforms uncompressed data into a lower frame rate "latent space" representation. The "quantizer" then compresses the representation to the target size while keeping track of the most important information that will later be used to rebuild the original signal. (This compressed signal is what gets sent through a network or saved to disk.) Finally, the decoder turns the compressed data back into audio in real time using a neural network on a single CPU. Meta's use of discriminators proves key to creating a method for compressing the audio as much as possible without losing key elements of a signal that make it distinctive and recognizable: "The key to lossy compression is to identify changes that will not be perceivable by humans, as perfect reconstruction is impossible at low bit rates. To do so, we use discriminators to improve the perceptual quality of the generated samples. This creates a cat-and-mouse game where the discriminator's job is to differentiate between real samples and reconstructed samples. The compression model attempts to generate samples to fool the discriminators by pushing the reconstructed samples to be more perceptually similar to the original samples."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Starting Tuesday, New York City employers must disclose salary information in job ads, thanks to a new pay transparency law that will reverberate nationwide. Axios reports: What's happening: Employers have spent months getting ready for this. They'll now have to post salary ranges for open roles -- but many didn't have any established pay bands at all, says Allan Bloom, a partner at Proskauer who's advising companies. Already, firms like American Express, JPMorgan Chase and Macy's have added pay bands to their help-wanted ads, reports the Wall Street Journal. How it works: Companies with more than four employees must post a salary range for any open role that's performed in the city -- or could be performed in the city. Violators could ultimately be fined up to $250,000 -- though a first offense just gets a warning. Reality check: It's a pretty squishy requirement. The law requires only that salary ranges be in "good faith" -- and there's no penalty for paying someone outside of the range posted. It will be difficult for enforcement officials to prove a salary range is in bad faith, Bloom says. "The low-hanging fruit will be [going after] employers that don't post any range whatsoever." Many of the ranges posted online now are pretty wide. A senior analyst role advertised on the Macy's jobs site is listed as paying between $85,320 and $142,080 a year. A senior podcast producer role at the WSJ advertises an "NYC pay range" of $50,000 - $180,000. The wide ranges could be particularly reasonable if these roles can be performed remotely, as some companies adjust pay according to location.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Tumblr has made an update it hinted at in September, changing its rules to allow nudity -- but not sexually explicit images -- on the platform. The Verge reports: The company updated its community guidelines earlier today, laying out a set of rules that stops short of its earlier permissive attitude toward sexuality but that formally allows a wider range of imagery. "We now welcome a broader range of expression, creativity, and art on Tumblr, including content depicting the human form (yes, that includes the naked human form). So, even if your creations contain nudity, mature subject matter, or sexual themes, you can now share them on Tumblr using the appropriate Community Label," the post says. "Visual depictions of sexually explicit acts remain off-limits on Tumblr." A help center post and the community guidelines offer a little more detail. They say that "text, images, and videos that contain nudity, offensive language, sexual themes, or mature subject matter" is allowed on Tumblr, but "visual depictions of sexually explicit acts (or content with an overt focus on genitalia)" aren't. There's an exception for "historically significant art that you may find in a mainstream museum and which depicts sex acts -- such as from India's Sunga Empire," although it must be labeled with a mature content or "sexual themes" tag so that users can filter it from their dashboards. "Nudity and other kinds of adult material are generally welcome. We're not here to judge your art, we just ask that you add a Community Label to your mature content so that people can choose to filter it out of their Dashboard if they prefer," say the community guidelines. However, users can't post links or ads to "adult-oriented affiliate networks," they can't advertise "escort or erotic services," and they can't post content that "promotes pedophilia," including "sexually suggestive" content with images of children. On December 17th, 2018, Tumblr permanently banned adult content from its platform. The site was owned by Verizon at the time and later sold to WordPress.com owner Automattic, which largely maintained the ban "in large part because internet infrastructure services -- like payment processors and Apple's iOS App Store -- typically frown on explicit adult content," reports The Verge.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: According to the Recording Industry Association of America's Mid-Year 2022 report (PDF), vinyl is continuing a trend initiated in 2020, when vinyl revenue surpassed CD revenue -- a state of affairs we haven't seen since 1986, according to the RIAA [PDF]. The RIAA reported that vinyl revenue grew 22 percent in the first half of this year to $570 million, outpacing CDs ($200 million) and representing physical music's largest revenue share. Japanese audio brand Audio-Technica has seemingly taken note of this trend and has decided to rerelease its Sound Burger portable record player. The product is one of several that the company is releasing to celebrate its 60th birthday. Based on a plate on the player's side, the company is producing just 7,000 units. Debuting in 1980, the original Sound Burger AT727 offered a way for people to listen to their 33-1/3 and 45 vinyl records outside of their homes. There were some caveats, though; records stuck precariously out of the unit and, as noted by SlashGear, the player needed to sit on a flat surface during operation. The new Sound Burger AT-SB2022 looks much like the old one, but Audio-Technica added Bluetooth 5.2 support, so you can listen to your vinyl through wireless headphones. There's also a 3.5 mm jack this time around instead of stereo RCA outputs, but Audio-Technica is also including a dual RCA adapter. Additionally, there's no longer a need for clunky batteries, as the refreshed portable record player charges over USB-C. Audio-Technica claims the record play will last for about 12 hours before needing a charge, which it says will take around 12 hours to complete. As noted by Digital Trends, the original Sound Burger, also known as Mister Disc in some geographies, required user maintenance to make sure records continued spinning at the proper speed. But Audio-Technica's 2022 record player has a DC servo motor driving its belt-drive system for "stable rotation," the record player's product page says. "Designed for both portability and stability, the tonearm employs a dynamic balance system in which stylus pressure is applied through a spring," the page says. Audio-Technica says its ATN3600L stylus works with the new record player. Other specs for the Sound Burger include a 50 dB output and a 20-20,000 Hz transmission band. Audio-Technica is selling the 2022 Sound Burger for $200.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

New EU rules came into force today that could compel Apple to let users access third-party app stores and permit app sideloading on iPhones and iPads, among other sweeping changes designed to make the digital sector fairer and more competitive. MacRumors reports: Under the Digital Markets Act (DMA), the rules will apply to tech giants that meet its "gatekeeper" criteria and force them to open up their various services and platforms to other companies and developers. Apple is almost certain to be classified as a "gatekeeper" due to the size of its annual turnover in the EU, its ownership and operation of platforms with a large number of active users, and its "entrenched and durable position" due to how long it has met these criteria, and will therefore be subject to the rules set out in the DMA. The DMA could force Apple to make major changes to the way the App Store, Messages, FaceTime, and Siri work in Europe. For example, it could be forced to allow users to install third-party app stores and sideload apps, give developers the ability to closely interoperate with Apple's own services and promote their offers outside the App Store and use third-party payment systems, and access data gathered by Apple. One of the more recent additions to the DMA is the requirement to make messaging, voice-calling, and video-calling services interoperable. The interoperability rules theoretically mean that Meta apps like WhatsApp or Messenger could request to interoperate with Apple's iMessage framework, and Apple would be forced to comply within the EU. The DMA was proposed by the European Commission in December 2020 and agreed by the European Parliament and the Council in record-time, in March 2022. It now moves into a six-month implementation phase and will start to apply on May 2, 2023. After that, within two months and at the latest by July 3, 2023, potential gatekeepers will have to inform the Commission of their core platform services if they meet the thresholds established by the DMA. Once the Commission has received the complete information, it will have 45 working days to make an assessment as to whether the company in question meets the thresholds and to designate them as gatekeepers. Following their designation, gatekeepers will have six months to comply with the requirements in the DMA, at the latest by March 6, 2024.Read more of this story at Slashdot.